At the end of the day, Donna and I lie in bed and send messages out over Twitter by way of our new i-phone. The following is one of our typical conversations.

ME: Ho het yourwelf a hoof bool to reaf? That’s not what I typed.

DONNA: What did you mean to say?

ME: Go get yourself a good book to read. I was just sending a message to all my friends on Twitter. The keypad on this i-phone is so small, my fingers are mangling my message.

DONNA: You’ll get the hang of it. It’s incredible technology.

ME: I know. It’s a whole new world out there. I love this stuff.

DONNA: So you’re back on Twitter?

ME: Yes, but I have to think of something interesting to say. I’ve got it. I know what to tell everybody. Now that summer is over, I’m going to stop eating popsicles. Do you think that will get me thousands of followers.

DONNA: No.

ME: What do you mean no? Will it get me one follower?

DONNA: Probably not. It doesn’t grab the attention.

ME: What am I going to do when even my own wife doesn’t find my tweets interesting?

DONNA: You have to think about what makes you read someone else’s posting.

ME: I pay attention to the picture and I like messages that are clear and easy to understand. I know what I don’t like. I don’t like all those letter abbreviations, things like BFF and LOL. They slow me down. I have to stop and think what they mean.

DONNA: Yes, but that’s the younger generation. They can fire those things off easy as can be.

ME: Then maybe I’ll have to come up with my own letter combinations.

DONNA: Nobody will know what they mean.

ME: Sure they will. It will be determined by the context.

DONNA: I see what you’re saying. For example, you could sign all your tweets DOM for dirty old man.

ME: Hah-hah. And you’d be DOW.

DONNA: Hey, I resent that. I’d be DYW, dirty young woman.

ME: All right, I’ll give you that one. I’ve got another idea. Maybe we should sign-off to each other every night over Twitter. That might spark some interest. I could say something like, “@Donna_Carrick Tweet Dreams, Tweetheart!”

DONNA: Now you’re sounding like Humphrey Bogart, with an even worse lisp than usual.

ME: That would be okay with me. Remember The African Queen. At the end of the film, Bogart and Katharine Hepburn are facing a hanging by the captain of the German boat, but Bogart talks him into marrying them first. Hepburn’s face lights up and she adjusts her hair. It’s one of the great scenes in all of the movies.

DONNA: Simply fabulous. He was a real DOM in that movie. Mostly unshaven and hitting the bottle. Remember the leeches? Yech! But she straightened him out.

ME: We need to be cute like that.

DONNA: That’s going to be hard when all of your tweets should end TTIB.